The Empress of the Last Days - Hardcover

Stevenson, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224061429 ISBN 13: 9780224061421

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2003

Synopsis

The triumphant conclusion to Stevenson's trilogy of historical novels. The Empress of the Last Days is the final volume of the remarkable trilogy that began with Astraea and The Pretender. Whereas the events of those novels occurred in the seventeenth century, those of this novel take place now, in the twenty-first. A series of documents come to light in Middelburg and London. They touch upon the events described in Astraea and The Pretender. A group of friends, Corinne, Theodoor and Michael, bring together their talents and knowledge to uncover the hidden story of Pelagius's royal marriage. The lives which readers of the first two books have known as lived experience have been reduced to information, guesses based on dusty scraps of paper. As a result of their investigations, Michael finds himself journeying to Barbados to meet the last descendant of the marriage of Pelagius and Elizabeth of Bohemia - a young black scientist who, unknown to herself, has a serious claim to be considered the rightful queen of England. This meeting, and the discoveries which result from it, changes both their lives, and forces them to re-examine their assumptions and the terms on which they live. The Empress of the Last Days is set in Middelburg, Utrecht, London, Silloth on the coast of Cumbria, and Barbados. It is in part a tale of discovery, and in part a love story: a tragicomedy in which race, academic politics, and contemporary enthusiasm for 'spin' all have their parts to play.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Stevenson is the author of a collection of novellas, Several Deceptions, and three novels, London Bridges, Astraea and The Pretender. She is reader in English at the University of Aberdeen.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This sophisticated novel has the feel of years of planning--not because it is overdone but because it is intricate, vastly knowledgeable, and well thought out. It is the concluding volume of a trilogy that reimagines the life of Elizabeth of Bohemia, sister of England's Charles I and a lively figure in seventeenth-century politics; it follows The Winter Queen (2002) and The Shadow King (2003) and brings Stevenson's interpretation of the queen's life and lasting effect up to the present day. The trilogy's two previous volumes wondered what would have happened if Elizabeth of Bohemia had married--a second time, and clandestinely--a black African prince and former slave. And now, in her infinite creativity, the author unleashes a group of scholars to unearth and interpret a trove of documents establishing the veracity of that long-ago situation and thus the precedence of an alternative family line of claimants to the British throne. So, who is the rightful monarch of Britain--the current occupant, Queen Elizabeth II, or a black scientist in Barbados? As much about competition in academe as about alternate versions of history, this novel is reminiscent in its learned tone of the works of A. S. Byatt. Brad Hooper
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About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0224061429
• ISBN 13: 9780224061421
• Binding: Hardcover